I am an experienced entrepreneur and venture capitalist and a voracious reader. My reading, particularly of non-business books, is motivated not just by a natural curiosity, but is also driven by a continuous search for metaphors and lessons from outside the traditional business genre that I can apply to situations and decisions in the business arena. My appreciation of the crossover benefit of non-business narratives to business contexts has motivated me to write my own Business Fiction works to “enlighten and entertain.”
Murder at First Principles is the debut Startup Fiction novel by successful venture capitalist Ben Wiener. Written as a murder mystery, the plot is designed to enlighten and entertain, introducing readers to Hamilton Helmer’s iconic work,7 Powers, and its seven market-proven strategies for sustained competitive advantage. Every suspect in this story is hiding something—strap yourself in and try to uncover their secrets while discovering the secret “powers” innovative businesses harness to create persistent differential returns.
While David and Goliath is generally listed as a “self-help” book, Gladwell’s understanding of the biblical vignette unlocks a profound business strategy that Hamilton Helmer defines as “Counterpositioning” in his book 7 Powers.
Not a weak “underdog” at all, David (the Challenger) defeats Goliath (the Incumbent) by turning Goliath’s very strengths into his weaknesses.
David alters the rules of engagement and confidently strides into battle knowing that he has an excellent chance of success because Goliath, even as he sees David’s strategy unfolding, is incapable of competing David’s way.
David is the quintessential counterpositioner, adopting a model of behavior that Goliath is powerless to employ in response, much like Netflix streaming videos on demand and competing with giant Blockbuster and its megastores filled with physical VHS tapes. Game over.
Explore the power of the underdog in Malcolm Gladwell's dazzling examination of success, motivation, and the role of adversity in shaping our lives, from the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia.
Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won.
Or should he have?
In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwellchallenges how we think about obstacles…
Warren Buffet cites Ted Williams’ plate discipline as his model for investment selection, and I keep a copy of this book on my shelf with its image of Williams’ strike zone prominently displayed.
Williams was the last major league baseball player to hit over .400 in a season and his insight was that not all strikes are created equal.
He identified the granular, baseball-sized quadrants within the strike zone that represented his “sweet spot” and he maintained supreme discipline to avoid all other pitches.
Of course, baseball is a team sport, not an individual sport, and Williams’ rigid plate discipline often set him at odds with teammates and fans.
But investing is all about picking, and Williams’ discipline and resolve against FOMO are models for astute investors.
“Baseball’s last .400 hitter share[s] his secrets in this primer still used at all levels of the game.” —Paul Dickson, author of Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick
Now fully revised with new illustrations and diagrams, the classic—and still the greatest—book on hitting from the last baseball player to break the magic .400 barrier, Ted Williams.
Ted Williams was arguably the greatest pure hitter who ever lived. A lifelong student of hitting, he sought advice from every great hitter—and pitcher—he met. Drawing on that advice, as well as his own legendary life in baseball, Williams produced the all-time batting classic, The…
If you read this book about the early cross-Atlantic explorers and substitute today’s technology entrepreneurs, the metaphors fit cleanly.
They sold exuberant, sometimes-fulfilled, and often-failed stories to profit-seeking backers, took inordinate risks, and results were often winner-take-all.
As Mark Twain, another famous explorer, once said, “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”
The late Samuel Eliot Morison, a former U.S. Navy admiral, was also one of America's premier historians. Combining a first-hand knowledge of the sea and transatlantic travel with a brilliantly readable narrative style, he produced what has become nothing less than the definitive account of the great age of European exploration. In his riveting and richly illustrated saga, Morison offers a comprehensive account of all the known voyages by Europeans to the New World from 500 A.D. to the seventeenth century. Together, the two volumes of The European Discovery of America tell the compelling stories of the many intrepid explorers…
Another book about seafarers with deep business lessons.
Lansing’s riveting account of Ernest Shackleton and his wayward crew teaches much about when and how to “pivot.”
W. Brian Arthur wrote, “Entrepreneurship in advanced technology, is not merely a matter of decision-making; it is a matter of imposing cognitive order on situations that are repeatedly ill-defined.”
Few situations in history were as “ill-defined” as the one the Endurance and its crew encountered, and the story highlights how Shackleton maintained discipline, loyalty, motivation, and perseverance among his crew as they “pivoted” to a radically different strategy and planned under intense pressure and with minimal resources.
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed between two ice floes. With no options left, Shackleton and a skeleton crew attempted a near-impossible…
Yes, thatT.E. Lawrence, of “Lawrence of Arabia” fame.
Turns out that not only was he an exquisite writer, but his account of his years as a British officer who self-embedded with Arab tribesmen during the First World War provides deep lessons for business success.
For starters, just because you’re highly intelligent and educated (Oxford, in his case), don’t assume you must agree with your superiors or yourself about the true motivations and interest of your customers, until you get to know them intimately.
Walk a mile in their shoes – or perhaps thousands of miles in their sandals – and then you might get insights about how to best work with them that might surprise you, and run counter to your prior presumptions.
As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926, tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus.
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
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